Carlos Fuentes, Mexico and modernity
By: Maarten van Delden.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Vanderbilt University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: [Nashville]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
Subjects: Fuentes, Carlos -- Criticism and interpretation; Mexico -- In literature
Description: In Carlos Fuentes, Mexico, and Modernity, Maarten van Delden argues that there is a fundamental paradox at the heart of Fuentes's vision of Mexico and in his role as novelist and critic in putting forth that vision. This paradox hinges on the tension between national identity and modernity. A significant internal stake out two different positions for himself, as experimental novelist and as politically engaged and responsible intellectual.

Drawing from his fiction, literary essays, and political Journalism, van Delden places these tensions in Fuentes's work in relation to the larger debates about modernity and postmodernity in Latin America. He concludes that Fuentes is fundamentally a modernist writer, in spite of the fact that he occasionally gravitates toward the postmodernist position in literature and politics.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-249) and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction : Carlos Fuentes in the 1950s; title: Myth, contingency, and revolution; title: Between identity and alternativity; title: Making it new; title: Utopia and the state; title: The nation as unimaginable community; title: The real nation and the legal nation; title: Conclusion : Carlos Fuentes in the 1990s.